[0:20] so we're here today because as a municipality

[0:23] we want it to reflect in our offer of culture, community, life and leisure

[0:28] to allow us to guide our strategic decisions over the next ten years.

[0:33] So at the end of summer 2023, we gave a mandate to

[0:37] Raymond Chabot Grant Thornton to conduct a study of our cultural

[0:41] and leisure needs of the Beaconsfield residents.

[0:44] And we're very excited to show you the results tonight.

[2:14] So my name is Maude Giard.

[2:16] I'm a manager in the tourism laser and culture at Raymond Chabot

[2:19] and we've been working with the city since the past summer

[2:23] to help them with this analysis.

[2:51] So tonight I'm not going to go through in.

[2:54] I'm not going to go in in details of the entire work that we've done because

[2:58] it's a report that's over 100 pages long, and that will be quite a long evening.

[3:02] So I'm just going to go through the the key findings and the orientations,

[3:06] the directions that we're going to that we are proposing to the city

[3:09] based on our findings.

[3:10] So I will start

[3:15] I will

[3:16] do English and French both for the presentation, but I'm going to do

[3:21] like one page only in English and the next page only in French.

[3:24] But when I'm speaking English, it's going to be written in French.

[3:27] So just it doesn't go over too long.

[4:02] the work for Nicole the work we were doing

[4:05] is an analysis of the needs of the population in regards to culture,

[4:08] sports, leisure, community, life, neighborhood life.

[4:12] So all that makes the quality of life of a city.

[4:15] So the main assignment, the main objective that we have were to draw up a detailed

[4:19] portrait of the population to understand its features, its leisure habits.

[4:25] What do people enjoy doing?

[4:26] What are they doing? All this?

[4:29] And we also we also wanted to examine, examine the current situations

[4:33] in terms of leisure, offering

[6:01] But obviously as we wanted

[6:02] to ered the population needs, we also talk with the population.

[6:06] So we had an online surveys that we did a bit earlier in 2023.

[6:10] You might have taken part in it.

[6:13] We have the on the online survey that reached

[6:15] about 1250 resident of Beaconsfield.

[6:19] There was also a part that was specific as a survey

[6:22] to was specific for the teenagers because they're a bit harder to reach.

[6:25] So we had a specific survey for them as well.

[6:28] And we've conducted as also a focus group for different focus group

[6:32] where I see that many familiar faces that were there maybe

[6:36] and we talked to about 45 people in those focus group.

[6:41] So from all this work

[6:43] we're going to present you the seven main the seven key

[6:46] findings that we add in regards to that

[6:49] the population needs for sports, leisure, culture and community life.

[6:56] So the first one

[6:57] is the recognition that sports, leisure, culture

[7:01] and community are important fields of action for the quality of life.

[7:06] The city when we came to to to find out is that the city

[7:09] is well aware of the importance of this feel of those fields.

[7:13] They recognize that they are important, they are essential

[7:17] to the citizens quality of life.

[7:18] So that's a good start

[7:19] to recognize that and to be aware of that, that's a good start.

[7:23] And they also have significant, significant resources

[7:26] and infrastructures to develop those areas.

[7:29] So we can in terms of resources, we can think about the staff.

[7:33] There's 116 people that works in those different fields,

[7:37] about 114 serving employees and 16 that are full time.

[7:41] So this includes people

[7:42] working at the library, at the pool arena recreation center at the day camp.

[7:47] So all of those different activities.

[7:51] There is also an annual

[7:53] budget because when we talk resources, we often talk about money.

[7:56] Obviously, there's an annual budget of about $9 million.

[8:00] This includes everything that's related to sports culture

[8:04] and also the parks.

[8:07] There's also several infrastructures that are owned by the city.

[8:11] The building that we're in right now, Library, the rec center Centennial

[8:16] and all the parks as well, and the equipments that we find in those parks.

[8:21] And finally, there's also many

[8:23] plans and policies that are either directly linked

[8:26] to culture, sports, leisure, or that have some actions related to it.

[8:30] We can think about that age friendly municipality policy.

[8:35] There's the Park and Greenspaces

[8:38] master plan that is also a with that

[8:41] the association recognition policy, the universal accessibility plans

[8:45] that has some specific action related to leisure as well.

[10:28] So the first field of activity

[10:30] is the culture cultural activities.

[10:34] Globally the satisfactions rates are quite high, especially library

[10:38] you with 94% of the people that answer that say they were satisfied.

[10:42] So that's a very good rating.

[10:44] People enjoyed their library.

[10:45] They enjoyed going there

[10:47] and it was also the cultural center so that the building in the centennial area

[10:52] and that that had an 84% satisfaction rate, which is also good.

[10:58] But in the comments

[10:59] we understood that it was mostly the outdoor experience, the concert,

[11:02] the shows, the events that takes place more than what happens inside the building

[11:11] at the sports and leisure

[11:13] was at a bit of a lower satisfaction rate globally.

[11:16] There was the lowest from all the different fields you can see.

[11:22] There is no well, it's not it's not really bad.

[11:26] It's mostly it's like 74, 75% for the indoor indoor pool,

[11:30] 64% for the arena, which is not that I

[11:34] but there's some issues with the state of the building itself.

[11:38] The lowest was really for the indoor recreation center activities.

[11:41] So apart from the pool in the arena.

[11:44] So everything that might happen, sports classes, fitness classes, the open gym

[11:49] for a pickleball or basketball or whatever.

[11:53] So they had a bit of a lower satisfaction rape.

[11:55] And the last one was the outdoor pools.

[11:58] They are the big people that go to those pool seem to really, really enjoy those.

[12:03] When we ask the citizen to compare the Beaconsfield offering

[12:09] with the other cities around,

[12:10] that was the sports

[12:11] and leisure was the one that they say we had in something that an offering

[12:14] that was inferior, that the other city had a superior offering to what we had.

[12:18] There was really where it was the most, the most

[12:23] jealous,

[12:24] and more likely a mishap decided the one that was the most often mentioned

[12:29] as in Superior, outside of Beaconsfield.

[12:35] And the last category was specifically for the parks.

[12:39] There was a good satisfaction.

[12:40] People enjoyed their greenspaces, they enjoyed their parks.

[12:43] I think you're currently working in the green spaces in Park Master Plan,

[12:47] so this is something that's also probably going to come out from this plan.

[12:52] But globally, people enjoyed their their parks.

[12:54] And where are you at?

[12:55] A bit of a lower satisfaction rate

[12:57] was mostly for the facilities or equipments in the park.

[13:00] So like the outdoor sports fields might have had a little bit

[13:05] of a lower satisfaction

[14:09] I'm the next one

[14:11] is a programing for everyone so we have many activities

[14:15] that our offer and they do attract a large number of participants.

[14:18] We have some example here for the library and we have about 90,000 visits a year,

[14:24] which is a lot of people and a lot of people coming to

[14:27] the recreation center, all activities combined.

[14:30] So arena pool classes, summer camp,

[14:34] all of those add over 133,000 visit.

[14:37] So people do take part in the activities that are offered

[14:40] and we have a large number of participant.

[14:44] But there today

[14:46] one of the common

[14:47] that came into the survey and in the focus group as well was that

[14:51] those activities were mostly geared towards either young families or retirees

[14:56] or people that were available Monday to Friday, 9 to 5.

[15:00] So people that were not available during this time, they had a bit of a less

[15:04] diverse offering for them.

[15:06] You can see in this survey we also asked for a specific clientele

[15:10] or population profile, and you can see that for the senior

[15:13] people felt they had many activities and it suited their needs well.

[15:18] But at the opposite range you have the teenagers,

[15:20] which most people felt they didn't have enough offering for them

[17:18] Another important element for the cultural sports

[17:21] and leisure offering is in regards to the the collaboration.

[17:25] So we said that collaboration and partnerships needs to be strengthened.

[17:31] This city cannot offer everything herself itself.

[17:36] It needs to work with partners, it needs to work

[17:38] with different collaborators that can help them.

[17:43] Because when we do have this collaborative

[17:45] work, it can optimize what it's offered to our citizens.

[17:49] We cannot offer everything ourselves, but when we work with other,

[17:51] we're going to have a larger offering for people.

[17:55] And there's several potential partnering partnerships.

[17:58] Some of them are already in place, some can be improved,

[18:01] some can be strengthened.

[18:02] So we can think about neighboring municipalities, their schools.

[18:06] And there's also Oliver Associations.

[18:08] There is about 60 associations that currently

[18:12] I work for offer activities in beacon spheres.

[18:15] So this is and those are important partners that we need to to work with.

[18:20] However, we found that their offering was not well known by the population.

[18:26] There's a lot of activities offered, but people don't necessarily know

[18:29] that they exist.

[18:30] And there's also you need to to find a

[18:34] balance between the

[18:34] fact that they also they're not they don't only work with the Beacon

[18:38] Steel population, but also with all the other cities around.

[20:24] so we're going to start with the Ford guidelines.

[20:27] So guidelines are general guidelines. Yes.

[20:32] So their general guidelines that will that

[20:34] we have to keep in mind for every action that we're going to work on.

[20:38] So there are not specific things to do.

[20:40] They're not things oops, sorry, They're not things to check on the list.

[20:44] But whenever did that did

[20:47] the city of Beaconsfield team is going to be working on project.

[20:50] They're going to have those four guidelines in their head.

[22:01] the second guideline is an offering that connects its citizens.

[22:04] So by that we mean that the city focuses

[22:08] on facilities, activities and events that bring citizens together.

[22:12] So we're trying to see how can we connect people better.

[22:15] It also wishes to facilitate opportunities

[22:19] for citizens to explore and interact with their neighbors.

[22:22] So this might mean offering activities that are closer to a

[22:26] a small community neighborhood so people can connect and talk and meet.

[22:31] And it also wishes to strengthen the sense of belonging to the city as a whole,

[22:36] but also for two small communities within the city.

[23:49] and the fourth

[23:51] guideline which is an offering based on collaboration.

[23:54] As I mentioned a bit earlier, this city relies

[23:58] on partnerships to effectively serve the needs of its population.

[24:01] It cannot offer everything on its own.

[24:04] It needs to work with partners

[24:06] and it also needs to support its partners by facilitating their process.

[24:11] I'm sorry I tried repeating that word professionalization

[24:15] and I can't seem to see it's right, but it works to make sure its partners

[24:19] can offer a quality offering and they can work,

[24:23] and then that they can also respect the city's guideline.

[24:28] And so those guidelines are really general

[24:32] guidelines over everything.

[24:34] And now from that, we have to directions that will be at the base of that,

[24:39] the work of the city for the next ten years.

[25:07] And so the first direction as I mentioned,

[25:10] was develop and maintain a network of infrastructures and facility

[25:14] that effectively meets the needs of our citizens.

[25:17] It has three different strategy.

[25:19] The first one being to complete the major the major infrastructure renewal project

[25:23] that are already underway.

[25:25] So you do have the to carry out the Centennial Park project,

[25:29] but it's already ongoing.

[25:30] So it was just keep going.

[25:34] See the end of the project.

[25:35] And you have also the renovation and modernization of the recreation center.

[25:39] There's also a couple of plans

[25:41] that are already in place for the arena, for the pool.

[25:44] And so this is also there there's the redevelopment of the Windermere Park,

[25:49] which is the next part that's going to have a makeover.

[25:52] And overall and there's the Beacon Chalet.

[25:55] That was I'm I'm assuming it's almost finished or it's getting near Diane.

[25:59] I'm not quite sure, but almost there.

[27:18] the third

[27:19] strategy is to introduce a rig bill to avoid regular maintenance program

[27:25] for existing infrastructures,

[27:27] which is mostly to make sure that they don't deteriorate over time

[27:31] and that we need to do a major renovation project later.

[27:34] So just to keep in mind, always to keep our infrastructures, facilities,

[27:38] equipment up to date,

[28:41] I'm in the same strategy

[28:43] we also had to relocate or take outside

[28:48] some activities outside of their traditional infrastructures.

[28:52] So maybe there's an activity that could be offered in the park

[28:54] or in the in a park chalet instead of at the library or somewhere else.

[28:59] It doesn't necessarily apply to every activities where we can.

[29:02] Thing is, are there are some activities that we could

[29:05] tinker outside the box and see where else we could offer them to,

[29:10] to whoever

[29:11] ensuring that activities are offered all in all districts.

[29:14] And the last innovation part or renewing our approach part

[29:19] is to take an innovative approach to management.

[29:23] So does it have to be the city that offered this activities?

[29:28] Could it be offered with partners?

[29:30] Are there any other tools that could enable partners

[29:34] to contribute to this programing? Do we have to do it ourselves?

[29:36] So these are things that needs to be taking into consideration

[30:28] and the third strategy is to strengthen collaboration with associations.

[30:35] So as we mentioned earlier, our associations are important partners

[30:39] and we need to work an end in hand with them.

[30:42] We need to see how we can facilitate a quality offering on the parts of this.

[30:46] The associations, So make sure that this offerings

[30:50] is adapted to the needs of the population and it complements

[30:53] what is already offered.

[30:54] We don't want to offer something that the city and an association are offering.

[30:58] If only the association could offer it to more people.

[31:01] Maybe so. This needs to see.

[31:03] We need to see how we can work better for this

[31:05] and how we can optimize communication as well.

[31:08] Because we saw that many people, many of the population

[31:11] didn't know what was offered by the association.

[31:14] So how can we let them know what is going on?

[32:15] So this is all the strategies,

[32:17] direction, strategies and guidelines that came out of the report.

[32:21] Obviously, if we want to put those forward

[32:24] in the next ten years, there are some conditions for success.

[32:27] One of them is to ensure that everyone respects those guidelines.

[32:31] So obviously the city itself, its elected officials,

[32:34] when we're deciding new project, we need to keep the guidelines in mind

[32:37] because otherwise they're not gaming really.

[32:42] There is also the definition by the the team of an annual monitoring tool.

[32:47] If we want to make sure that we are

[32:49] and we're innovative, that we respond to the population need what we need to know

[32:54] how many people are attending our activities is it is the satisfaction

[32:57] good or so we need to have a bit of a monitoring tool for that

[33:52] so thank you very much for your time

[34:10] I'll sit I would like to thank you the residents who participated

[34:14] by a being here tonight

[34:15] who participated also in the surveys and in the focus groups.

[34:19] It was nice to see such a great participation rate and and show

[34:22] that you're interested in developing your community

Étude des besoins et attentes pour l'offre en culture, sports, vie communautaire, loisirs et saines habitudes de vie

Transcript